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Conflicts

Robert Wechsler
Another day, another grand jury report recommending government ethics reform. This report (attached; see below) comes from Orange County, NY, a county northwest of New York City, whose biggest town is Newburgh and whose most famous towns include the very different Tuxedo and Kiryas Joel.

The report criminally exonerates the county legislator who is its subject, because he did a couple things right:  he sought ethics advice from the ethics board, and he disclosed his employment with...
Robert Wechsler
As we know, the devil's in the details. In government ethics codes, this means the language. In the case I will look at here, the devil's in the verbs.

According to an article on the WTSP-TV website last week, a Florida state senator who lobbies for a sports team seeking taxpayer subsidies relating to payments on its sports arena...
Robert Wechsler
According to an article this week in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the new mayor of Poplar Bluff, MO is a gadfly who had been totally ignored when she questioned the dealings of her town government. This is generally a sign of a very poor ethics environment.

One of the problems she...
Robert Wechsler
Here's an interesting conflict situation from Louisiana that involves a good intra-governmental revolving door provision and unforeseen circumstances. According to an article today in the Advocate, the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board made the wise decision to ask the state ethics board, which has jurisdiction over local officials, whether it could hire the city's...
Robert Wechsler
On Monday, Anthony Man of the Sun-Sentinel wrote an excellent analysis of the lobbying elements of Florida Senate bill 846 (a copy of the bill is attached; see below), which was recently passed by the senate unanimously.

The law would prohibit local officials from registering as a lobbyist of state legislators or agencies, except on behalf of...
Robert Wechsler
When a city or county attorney's office does not represent the ethics commission, should that office play any role in an ethics proceeding? I don't believe it should.

But that is what happened recently in Cobb County, GA, according to an article last week in the Marietta Daily Journal. After an ethics complaint was...

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